


Inheritance

by darkrabbit



Series: Life with Theta [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Borrowed Character, M/M, Temporal Physics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-09
Updated: 2010-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-12 13:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 10,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkrabbit/pseuds/darkrabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and the Doctor are convinced they've each gone their separate ways, but a young girl's mysterious destiny may convince them otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sea Change

**Author's Note:**

> This fic involves the personal character of a friend of mine. I asked her or, she told me to, or something. Either way, she liked it, so, here it is!

His long, youthful fingers were a grace against the strings of the Goya acoustic he held. The song was a heavy one. He began to sing then, and as Wil listened she could imagine that the perfect voice of this young man had held other songs, and maybe even other languages in its grasp. He had such a way with the music, a feeling of words that only came with age. She knew, for she had seen a like glint in the eyes of her parents, seen it in the milky gaze of the elderly on the streets. But his eyes... those deep, impossibly warm eyes what sparkled with wit and the frosted, wiemeraner brown of horehound candies, they held something dark. Something dark and... golden. The refrain drifted up again, and sighing in wonder Wil allowed herself to focus on it, to truly hear the words as if for the first time.

 
    
    
    “Sagt wo sind die Veilchen hin?
    
    
    Die so freudig glänzten
    
    
    Und der Blumen Königin
    
    
    Ihren Weg bekränzten?
    
    
    Jüngling ach! Der Lenz entflieht,
    
    
    Diese Veilchen sind verblüht!
    
    
    Sagt wo sind die Rosen hin?
    
    
    Die wir singend pflückten,
    
    
    Als sich Hirt und Schäferin
    
    
    Hut und Busen schmückten?
    
    
    Mädchen ach! Der Sommer flieht,
    
    
    Jene Rosen sind verblüht!
    
    
    Führe denn zum Bächlein mich,
    
    
    Das die Veilchen tränkte;
    
    
    Das mit leisem Murmeln sich
    
    
    In die Täler senkte.
    
    
    Luft und Sonne glühten sehr,
    
    
    “Jenes Bächlein ist nicht mehr!

 

Soon she would find him on his corner, the guitarist with the magick hands. She rounded the corner, feeling the ancient cobbles resounding under her feet as she imagined what he would say when she presented her gift to him. She didn’t know why she had chosen to bestow her collection of antiquated German coins on the stranger, only that it seemed to fit into some puzzle. He and those coins, both. Maybe even Wil herself, since she had felt so compelled to give them, her last memento of childhood. _Well,_ she thought as she slipped past a tall American in a black suit and wormed her way through the rest of the gathering crowd, heading toward the young musician, _at least I’ll have an audience._ But it was only him she cared about, only him she saw as she weaved in and out of the throng. She could never have imagined ten days ago that a simple glance could have instilled so much... self-reliance. Now, remembering that first look, she found she had the will to do better, the drive, the first real chance to overcome some of her fears. In her anxiety to reach him, her shiny shoes snagged on the old pavers, and she ground into the dust and mud of the street, just short of his naked toes.

 

He waggled them in her face and kept on playing, and still there rose a resident twinkle in his eye that no one so youthful should have possessed.

 

<Huff> Wil shivered as two of the young man’s slender left phalanges gently brushed her nose. He smelled... strange, like chocolate and old books and warm summer days without a care. A clink beneath her drew his liquid, horehound eyes like fine German bloodhounds on a scent, and soon his guitar was handed off to the American in the stark Italian suit while he chased after Wil’s prize marks.

 

“Move back, if you please! Let them be, and take absolutely nothing that didn’t belong to you in the first place. We don’t want an unpleasant scene this early in the morning, do we, gentlemen? Ladies?”

 

The American flashed a badge then, the shiny blue and white of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. A Special Agent? What was going on?

 

“Oh, these are special marks, these, you genius, you.”

 

The younger man, her musician, sounded like a boy who’d lost his dog.

 

“I’ll take them. All of them. Ohhh! Tell me you don’t mind! Odd bit to be carrying them around elsewise.”

 

Wil glared. What had she seen in him? But still, all the time he spoke his eyes were on her, smiling on and up and over and through her like he was generating some kind of energetic displacement. Perhaps he was sensitive to magnetic fields? Or _she_ was. Why?

 

Suddenly the crowd had left her alone with him. With them, two men. And she felt more at ease then she ever had with her father.

 

“You were singing the original lyrics. What year is it, as of yesterday morning?”

 

She let the last word, calculated to throw him, crack off her tongue and waited. And while she waited, she analyzed the agent’s vocal patterns. Deep South, probably Louisiana, although it didn’t bleed through his German in the slightest.

 

Said American, a near-albino with bright grey eyes that flashed like double moons, grinned at her, then turned to watch the object of her attention with equal interest. Her musician, however, could have been made of freshly made chocolate, for all that he promptly melted like a cocoa bunny left in the heat of the day once he’d turned her question over in his head with more than a few confused tosses of the short, floppy brown mess that was his hair. But that smile, that big, winning grin, had left his face. Wil felt her flash of happy intrigue leave her at this knowledge, and at once it was as if she’d done something wrong. But what? How could she have? He was crying, staring at her blankly through tear-filled, dark candy drop eyes that gleamed like Christmas snow. How could she have done it? She didn’t know what, or why, but she had to touch his face, wipe the droplets away before he caught himself. Even the albino agent was frowning at him, his ragged emotiveness filling the air with the thick blush of... was it cinnamon? Puppies? Old candle wax?

 

“Oh god I’m sorry! I must have hurt you, mustn’t I? What was it? I have to know.” She couldn’t help herself, the words just came. Before Wil realized what had gone on, he was wrapping his arms around her, holding her as though she were an infant. A white hand caught her eye as she looked up, the fingers moving to rest on her musician’s other shoulder.

 

“It’s all right, sweetheart. You just... reminded me so much of someone I loved. A young girl, about your age. All spunk and bright fire, she was. It was your hair that reminded me, eventually. Of the fire, that is. It’s always fire, with me, Miss Beinert. You’d do well not to get burned.”

 

The musician’s eyes were sparkling again as he carefully untangled his arms from around her neck and stood back, though with what kind of light, Wil couldn’t be sure. Perhaps he had known what she was trying to catch him in, after all. He must have. And despite this, he’d let her do it.

 

“Who was she?”

 

A smile! At last, a smile played over that strong, reluctant jaw line! Wil bunched her fists and waited for the revelation.

 

“She was my granddaughter.”


	2. Twelve Ways Till Sunday

“What’s the matter? Stupid apes, that’s what you are! You can’t even take care of a fourteen year old girl! She’s important to my preparations, therefore I need to speak with her properly. Do you understand me?”

 

Like the rustle of leaves before a murder, a low, soft grunt in triplicate chorus was the only reply. Guess he truly would have to do all the talking. Fine with him. He had the gob, as it were.

 

“Well, I didn’t expect much anyway. Good to see you lot are catching on! Well, then... ”

 

Long hands rubbed together, and as the Questioner sighed for the hundredth time, a glint of light came to his colossal brain, and he absorbed it, drinking in the rosy, innocent blush, the crimson fullness, the salt sweet finish of his newest bloody notion with a fervor befitting a killer of worlds. Oh, he had so much grand work to do, so much terror to accomplish. So many deaths to plan. It was rather like a series of orchestral movements, his schedule of late. His thought was death, and it was beautiful. Death was all he had left.

 

He looked to the three limp forms of the off-worlders he’d hired grudgingly as extra hands, who hung like drying meat from hooks stuck high in the ceiling... for his own amusement, of course. He’d never used to like this sort of thing, but then again, he was not the man he used to be.

 

And now, there were children to think of.

 


	3. Dark City

“... oh, no no no! No no no no no! Wil my dear, you’re doing it all wrong! This is a matter of supreme importance! Now, watch me!”

 

Their makeshift table was set with a simple bit of white cloth, nothing on their plates, no plates to begin with, and thankfully, no one else in the building to witness any of it. They were alone; Wil, the cool, calm American and her musician, the latter sporting a manic, frowning twist of lips seemingly so accustomed to outburst they held the open position permanently whilst he demonstrated his point. His pretty fingers held the lemon to the curve of the agent’s penknife, letting the blade kiss the hard yellow puckering of dimples as though the pensive fruit were a canvas and the knife a brush in his able hand. Halved at once, the lemon slid down languidly past the edge of the knife and clapped a thick thud on the tablecloth, whereas the younger man stuffed a hand in his pocket, digging, tugging, straining for something...

 

When did they end, those pockets? Wil wondered at it, and questioned, too, why he hadn’t noticed her noticing. She turned to the American and queried him.

 

“Is he always this... macrocosmic?”

 

The charming albino smiled, showing a perfect set of whites beneath thin, devilishly kissable lips.

 

“If I needed to hazard a guess, I would have to say mostly yes. But you’ve already answered that question yourself, Miss Beinert. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have voiced it to me. That other thing you were wondering... the usual whys, whats, wheres, I presume? I am so very sorry, but you’ll have to ask my companion. I tend to leave things need-to-know. A bad habit, but very hard to break.”

 

An inward-turning smile formed across his face then, for a tiny little moment that seemed to last forever to Wil. _Why were they here, searching for old coins, her collection of marks in particular?_ She didn’t care about that at the moment, and the American had known that before he’d spoken.

What she really wanted to know was, who? Who was this young man, this boy, who played and sang like a master, who quibbled like a grandfather? His claim about a lost granddaughter... it piqued her curiosity. So she turned to him, a fire for knowledge in her bright eyes, and said, “So what was her name?”

 

Wil’s musician stopped with the diner-style salt shaker half way to his mouth, having forgotten the lemon somewhere between a prattling recitation on the missing dialogues of Plato and the existence of secret handshakes in the lost Land of Mu. It was her turn to smile. He hadn’t heard a word she’d said.

 

Or so she thought.  But he was still holding the salt shaker when the agent reached for his hand and tried to lower his shaking fingers to the table five minutes later, exactly.

 

“I’m sorry, Wil, Aloysius,” he murmured, brushing a hand through his forward hanging mop of brown hair.

 

He looked haggard... but it was an old tiredness. How long had he carried that with him? As Wil caught his gaze, he shifted expression with the seamless grace of countless years of practice. With a sigh he studied the edge of their -tablecloth-, as though he didn’t want to face something, as though everything of sight had become a furnace to burn him alive. It would have been so easy to sit back down, to shrug it off the way he always had since the Late Great War. But he would not be doing that this day. No, not this day. So he slid his hands along the planks, feeling through the wood for weakness with his horrible, heightened senses. And horrible he was, for in that moment, he flung the table over their heads and made out the door, using the white cloth they’d covered the planks in to hide his escape.

 

The two remaining looked at each other in their cocoons of white and stood still. The agent knew what had happened. The man with all the answers had fled into the night, in the exact opposite direction of his hopes. Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast stood up then, and, quickly grasping Wil Beinert’s hand in the mess of white sheet, tugged sharply. The sheet disappeared to the side, and Wil stood there, incredulity mounting something of a frontal assault on her still quite girlish features.

 

“Stay close and follow me. We have to reach our... transport and vacate the immediate premises. I am truly sorry, Miss Beinert. None of us suspected that he would bolt quite so soon. Ordinarily, he only leaves when everything is done. I suspect we will see The Doctor again soon.”

 

The Doctor? _The_ Doctor?More questions. Wil only nodded and took his hand. There wasn’t quite enough information for her to stay, and too much not to. Aloysius nodded back, and they both spun together in the other direction, fleet of foot on the trail of escape from whence they’d come. But still the question was there, filling Wil’s head. It felt like drowning. She had to see him again, to find the answer. It was the long haul, or nothing.

 

They ran.


	4. Three Beneath the Waves

He could hear the wind in the grass. He could hear the click click clicking of a child playing on the broken pavement somewhere nearby. He could hear her heartbeat, thumping soundly in her little chest. It made him think of meat. And thinking of raw meat made him think of what he’d wanted to say to his lover.

 

 _“... every tear would turn a mill, Johnny’s gone for a soldier.”_

 

 It was a bit from the song he’d been singing to a small, carefree audience of young, vibrant faces before he’d made the decision to come here. Without that man’s knowledge. That man had left, a long, long time ago. A year, to them that believed in Time. Thinking of meat made him feel the hunger that was gnawing at his gut. He felt as though he were going to starve without something... someone with a pure enough bioelectrical signature to provide a proper meal. That, now, that too made him wonder. What would that little blonde child, playing there so happily in her yellow dress, think if she knew what was in his mind? She was practically an appetizer to him, in his state. Her psychic envelope was a field of butterflies, painted in rainbows and sprinkled with silvery beams. As the sun slipped further down its starry path, its waning light would reflect her colours just so. But it was almost dark. What was a child doing out so late? Alone among the crinkled weeds creeping up from the cracks in the cement parkways. He sighed. -She- was an obvious trap, placed in his path by the reluctant nemesis, to gauge him.

 

Amazing how acute some senses became, when nature belied her savage intent to your body and it obeyed, despite your best efforts to civilize its baser whims. He hadn’t sung much, till now. How long, he wondered. How long would it take before he was once more consumed by what was slumbering inside him? It had nearly surfaced many times since the day it first awoke after far too short a sleep. Some small part of him still wished it would have slept forever. But, that part of him was getting smaller, less vocal, with every passing hour. Absently, he fingered the old mark coin in his hand, his long fingers breathing in the ridges, the bumps and rises, the worn, dented places buffed smooth by touching. The psychic impressions it held...ah...just a fractured hint of every handler, every space it had ever dropped to, every drawer it had clinked in. It was one of the ones he’d been looking for. At once it was like something broke, some inner dam, and those rich, delicious place memories became a rising tide in his mind, flooding him, carrying him down, to the depths. To the Him he’d hidden away. He could almost see the creamy foam of his own mental demise coming to claim him as his reality faded into Darkness. In fact, the only thing he could see was water, now. Water was everywhere, rising over his head. Blinking didn’t help. He stumbled, catching his foot on something sharp as his bare skin hit wood. He could smell sea air. Had he wandered onto a dock? Why couldn’t he see? A stab ached through his Achilles tendon, straight through from the bottom flat of his naked heel. He’d stabbed himself on a nail. Probably a rusted hob from some beggar’s boot, or the iron spike from one of the shipyard dock posts. He blinked again. Still didn’t help. He had lived too long to give in to the terror of dying; besides, couldn’t he hold his breath longer than anyone? He’d always been longwinded, leastways.

 

One last step, and he felt he had fallen, was falling. His youthful flesh smacked something wet and cold and dark, sinking fast, and fluid filled his mouth. Was it to be like before? He couldn’t remember...so dark... getting darker... No time to breathe, no time to hold one’s breath as the real water filled him, sucking out his air from ample lungs. Agony had befallen him many times before, but never like this. Death by drowning. So soon? Well, perhaps it was deserved. Then he closed his eyes, and disappeared beneath the waters of the bay. No more running. Though, the small gaggle of locals and tourists who saw him fall did quite a lot of running. They made phone calls, screamed, looked on without the slightest bit of compassionate interest. To each their own, for no amount of coffee or denial could prepare them for the column of gold that exploded from the point where the waters had swallowed and chewed.  


	5. Come Sunrise


    **_ Britische Jugend verlor in der Bucht
    _
    **
    

_British Youth Lost in Bay_

Jack ignored Ianto over the rim of a blue cup with a crack in the handle; Ianto looked at Jack with bigger eyes than he’d made in weeks.

 

“Care for a biscuit, Jack?” the young man said, tossing a glance over the robin’s egg blue of the mug that held his lover’s coffee, “... that handle’s going to break. Be careful not to spill my good black in your lap. It’s your turn for babysitting duty.”

 

Jack Harkness felt... dry. It was that parched sensation one got when one hadn’t had enough water for a very long time, dry, like he needed more than a small taste of Hypervodka slipped into his coffee to wet his lips.

 

“I’ll only ask you one more time, Ianto.”

 

He slid a finger along one edge of the German newspaper, folding it like a frankfurter on a spiced onion bun. He took another edge, folded it carefully down over itself to form a sort of envelope. Then he took two points and bent them inward once, twice. Other edges followed, and soon there was a paper plane in his hands. It bore smudges of dark ink, and held the faint lemon scent of sweet kuchen dough. New paper, new headline. Old problem.

 

“So what’s it going to be, since I’m staying in?”

 

He caught the Welshman’s iron browns and upped him two sky blues, his own.

 

“Pepperoni and pineapple or sausage and cheese?”

 

“Is that a trick question, Jack? Cardiff is not New York. Although, if you ask nicely, I’m sure one of the weevils we found here will be more than happy to spit on it for you at no extra charge.”

 

“I’m saying, my delectable _au pair_ , that there is something wrong with our order. Did you read this?”

 

Jack sailed the hefty paper plane at the Welshman, who caught it in one hand and pitched his best puerile glare back at the captain.

 

“Of course; I’ve already ordered the pizza. Do you think there will be extra toppings?”

 

Jack smiled, revealing his infamous thirty white horses behind a curl of predatory lips.

 

“Oh, Ianto. You’re an angel. Did I ever tell you that? And, yes to your question. We should expect one _on the house_ at least, if the pizza delivery boy shows up and gets the pizza wrong this trip. The establishment owes us for des Osterhagen Schlüssels.”

 

Ianto thought about this, blinking and strumming his chin with his thumb. The whole thing was getting involved. Very involved. Very underhanded.

 

“I don’t know, Jack. I hear they like all kinds of pizza in Germany. And they call their dance halls Disko. Frankly I very much doubt our particular pizza boy would be caught dead within one hundred miles of one of those.”

 

“Ha ha! I love you, Ianto. You’re sharp. But one thing’s for certain, we better bring our own utensils, because we won’t be using the Autobahn. You know how travel gets congested on public lanes... We might be eating in the vehicle, as it is, once we get it started and make sure it isn’t swiped out from under us. If... when the manager comes back, I may have a few words for him about the quality of our order. And we may have to hotwire the old girl. Old cars can be persnickety.”


	6. Cliche

“... it can be quite useful if you work at it, Miss Beinert,” Aloysius X. Leng Pendergast said softly, shaking his reddened wrists as he tugged at the trick rope with a quick, gnashing swish of his pearly whites.

 

The length of woven twine fell from him instantly, and so he shrugged his muscles forward and back, in that nonchalant way of a very impressive, very intelligent man trying _not_ to sound impressive whilst he flexed the subtle sinew of his tight runner’s frame.

 

Young Wil Beinert, despite her mere fourteen years, felt a laugh catch in her throat. She released it, and the sound bubbled out into exactly the bemused snort she’d presumed it to be, the movement nearly washing her face in her own red-gold curls.

 

“You two just can’t help it, can you?” she asked, feeling a certain enamor build in her toward this man and the man who had left them both, though she had never known either of them till a few short days ago.

 

“You preen without trying, and he does it without thinking. It’s adorable.”

 

Aloysius blinked. This he hadn’t expected, but his mind was on other things.

 

“Do forgive me, Miss Beinert, but I do hope you aren’t about to proclaim your undying love to me. I am afraid, in that particular department, I am already quite taken.”

 

The comment was intended as a bit of sarcasm, but what came out was completely honest and candid. Even after all the Doctor had done for his damaged psyche, he still found it difficult to open up. But somehow, with this girl it wasn’t so difficult. Wasn’t so... hard to react without caution. He parted his lips, choosing carefully now.

 

“That was merely my sad attempt at humour, Miss Beinert. I do apologize.”

 

That grin played on his face, and he pondered for the moment whether to keep it attached to his lips or let it slide off. He let it stay, languidly sipping on his glass of sun tea as he watched her across another table, this one in a reputable piazza-style eatery called Am Die Rheine. How long would the Doctor stay away? He would never leave the girl, not after they’d learned what they’d learned about her collection before ever leaving Cardiff.

 

“He still has the coins, Agent Pendergast,” Will said, poking at the generous portion of knackwurst and knudeln still on her plate, “... do you think it was him in that incident on the docks? The coins might be at the bottom of the bay by now, along with his... ”

 

A shudder ran through her, as though an early frost had formed along her spine, spitting ice chunks at her brain. So she forced herself to think of Puccini, his successes, his failures, those magickal whoops and swirls, whose grave incantations of note and time gave new life to old paper crisped by many hands. Math was like that, for her. And music was a most holy and beautiful math. She could see Truth in the way the music played through her head. Her thoughts were always full of math, of songs that lingered past the waking hours.

 

“Going somewhere, Miss Beinert?”

 

A slight hand brushed her shoulder, so gently it was like the bristle of feathers on a lone morning seagull. Aloysius was brighter than a seagull by far, she thought as a sudden flame of understanding lit her body, made her move from her chair and rise to her feet in a huff of renewed stamina. The agent stood as well, brushing off his suit before leaving a carefully folded paper bill on the petite little table and matching her stride as he caught her within two long steps of his well-shined black Italian shoes.

 

“Yes,” she called back to him, intent on her destination.

 

She wasn’t going to the docks, which he found uniquely fortuitous, considering the reports from certain of Torchwood’s operatives concerning that locale during the darker hours of morning and deep night. Apparently, whoever -they- were, they would soon begin stealing people in the day as well. That simply wouldn’t do. And the Doctor would have his head if something happened to the girl. Of course nothing would, but no one who knew his background in covert ops was around to share, even Proctor, his loyal chauffeur and backup, had been in the ground for three years now. Ah, back to the old days with dear Vincent, keeping secrets and sneaking about in Italian courtyards, trying to avoid the local law enforcement on a dangerous quest for private justice. As Vincent would have said, good times.

 

Good times, indeed, thought the agent as he easily matched Wil Beinert’s youthful stride up a flight of narrow steps which led into an alley. They were heading, he presumed, for a shortcut to the pier she had mentioned briefly in a conversation with a shopkeeper she knew from early childhood. Quick on her feet, and such an intellect! She simply had to meet his adopted daughter, Constance Greene. But Constance was in Bhutan, with the monks, thought to be the Green Tara, and she was busy raising his brother’s illicit child to be the next Lama. As if the monks could have gotten her to leave the baby after the odd seduction his brother had put her through. A little chuckle stole a minute portion of his air as they hurried through the streets. Oh yes. When this was over, he would have to tell her about this latest of his escapades. She was, after all, older even then he, and would appreciate his taking her into his confidence at long last after so many years of arms length interaction. She kept his secrets best of all, and he would keep hers, as he would keep Wil’s. As he had long since kept the Doctor’s. It would be folly to reveal all in its most exquisite detail, but he would give just enough to keep Constance entertained. The girl needed a friend as intelligent as she was, and he was simply no excuse for feminine support.

 

But one thing worried him. The Doctor had spoken of his precious Susan, right there in the street, in front of strangers. The Doctor, who was usually so very unwilling to share about his pain, had just sobbed in Wil’s arms in the dust. She had to be special indeed, for the man he looked up to most in the world, nay, in the whole of the cosmos, to just... break.

 

Either that, or a bigger mess was brewing than any of them knew, and only the Doctor could sort it. But he was gone, hiding from everyone for some terribly important reason. And Aloysius found, as he thought and ran and followed and thought and ran alongside the girl who was so very important to so many unseen plans, that he did not want to look where his thoughts were taking him.


	7. Percussion Instruments

“How would you like it if I used one of these on them?”

 

The Questioner held up his glowing implement, waving it in every sooty face. It was ever so amusing how they kept begging him to let them go. Begging. Him. Ah yes, they’d all done it, would do it, sooner or later, some with the usual boring array of tentacles, some a bit more exotic with fluid filled sacs that filtered air and produced vibrations through that mechanism. Some even looked remotely human... but he couldn’t see how he could compare _himself_  to the stinking apes, they were little more than monkeys, spilling forth like rats from their filthy, sprawling cities. Those cities, filled with the dust of monkeys past, were part of what had choked the life out of a once amusing pastime of his. He took no pleasure in it now, though he still felt drawn to go through the motions for the benefit of his newest guest. One had to keep up appearances when one was demonstrating one’s schedule to such a good acquaintance as this. It just wouldn’t do to bore his old friend to death, even if the friend _was_ an insufferable codger. Well, he was older, still. Of course he didn’t look it, but no gentleman worth his salt could afford to be seen in public without his... cravat. Or his caveat, for that matter. Hah. He snorted loudly. He had never been a gentleman. Never a gentleman, always a cad. A cad with a honey tongue cast in fine Argentium.

 

“It doesn’t matter what you do to them, you know... ” rasped the visitor after releasing a faint moan, sounding as though he had nearly choked somewhat recently on something fairly unpalatable, as there was a certain whitening around his deep brown eyes, while a grand, if finite, amount of blood stained his face and shirt like so much bright wax on a sealed missive.

 

“So, then! I see you’ve become a cannibal since last we met! You’re certainly going down in the world. But oh, I know what you’re thinking.”

 

He swept forward in a wave of retaliatory glee he could no longer feel, and clutched his friend by the chin, swiveling both their heads and shoulders toward the bodies what dangled from the shipping hooks above them.   

 

“You’re thinking what did I do to deserve this? Well look in the mirror, my friend! What’s sad is that you honestly thought you’d won! You! The ape loving hypocrite whose first initiation into the wild world of blood and gore was the slippery slope of adolescent pedocide! How fitting that we should be so close now. I mean, _we are old friends,_ after all!”




 

The visitor shook his head in sadness. This was no way to end it, but it had to be done. No more killing. No more but one more death need be on his conscience to-day. Nothing left but to end it, to murder what he had begun. So he took off his shirt, his soft good cotton shirt, and let it drip from his fingers to the floor. It made a smear on the dirty concrete, near his bare and elegant toes. His long hands, pale and smooth from prolonged exposure to the waters of the bay, found his near hairless chest and flattened gingerly against the heart there, his left one.

 

“Oh, ho ho! Is that what you’re going to do? Do you really think I’ll let you?”

 

Rightly so, old friend. I mean to release you from your suffering.”

 

Theta Sigma reached into his pocket, drawing a glinting round unto the dim light of the warehouse.

 

“I am sorry,” he said, his lips nearly bruising with the words as he stared up at the two living, thinking, still breathing creatures dangling from the filthy, long discarded meat hooks. Still, as with so many times before, he knew he could not say the words enough, so he simply uttered the rest of the line, licking the edges of his mouth as they dried like grapes in the sun with the effort of holding back everything he kept close for fear of disclosure.

 

“I am so sorry, for all of you. Koschei has done terrible things in his long life, but I am the true reason for his madness. Please. I ask that you allow me to free you from this place, from this pain.  Here, I will let you down.”

 

Koschei, or rather he who was the Master, smiled at his old friend.

 

“Ah, this won’t work. I have you now. You’re finally on my side of the fence, tasting each wretched, seething moment of my own personal Hell. Happy tormenting! By the way, where’s that fire haired infant you were leading around with the American? She has something I need.”

 

“And I don’t?”

 

Theta Sigma held up a coin, one of hers.

 

“You know, these have decidedly pre Solian markings, yes? Course I imagine that’s why you wanted them so badly. They look remotely like Old High Gallifreyan, once they’re properly shined up. Now, Koschei, you really have to rethink your hoarding habits. It could get quite messy, all stuffed up in a Grandfather Clock like a held sneeze. Rather like an old dragonne, one shouldn’t wonder. Don’t you? Or shall I call you Smaug?”

 

“What, wonder why you continue to annoy me? No. Keep on subject, you senile old git. My TT capsule works just fine, thank you, actually no thanks to you, now that we’re about it. What are you babbling at?”

 

“If she works just fine, where is she?”

 

Theta didn’t have to smirk as he crossed to the first hook and undid the knots, then levered the unconscious alien to the ground. Koschei was already fuming. Really, the older man was far too easy. Besides, he was in no mood to show off. He just wanted to get out, and quickly, before...

 

“What are you doing? You can’t do that! They’re mine! I hired them, not you. Doctor, you-”

 

But the Master did nothing as The Doctor stood after checking the first alien’s vitals and then moved to free the second.

 

“You can’t hinder me anymore, Koschei. I am my own man. And I have the only access to these you shall ever see.”

 

Theta could see his old friend cringe bodily, shrieking away from him as the glint from the offending metal of the coin he was thumbing danced over everything in the room.

 

“... if you let me see them, Doctor, I could translate! Help you unlock their mysteries! I know you want to!”

 

“Ha. Not a chance, Koschei. I was Lord President once, absconded out of boredom and abdicated my post, remember? Besides, I’m a genius. I’ve already done it.”

 

The Master sighed, audibly, scaring more than a few birds from the relative quiet of the warehouse’s upper covering. “Score one for the monkey loving ingrate! So what does it say? Eat at Pythia’s?”

 

“Very funny, Koschei. Actually you weren’t so off the mark, as it were. It’s a recipe for a spell, of sorts.”

 

Theta grinned at the Master like a cheeky 30’s moll, and the man just stared back at him, as though someone had relieved him of his manhood and forgotten to pay the bill.

 

“Of sorts! Bollocks. I thought you decided not to believe in that ridiculous gobbledygook, Theta. What’s come over you? Have you been at the ginger beer again?”

 

 _Oh good. I’ve got him talking. Maybe he won’t notice it so quickly when I do it, then._

“Koschei. I want you to know something.”

 

The Doctor took his other hand out of his pocket and produced a bag that clinked. He held up the coin he was playing with then, and flipped it over and over in his fingers, letting the gleam of light again play across The Master’s face.

 

Koschei could feel it; the temporal signature of those coins, felt it as he felt Theta’s presence before him, looming like a pall.

 

“What are you doing, Theta? Can’t we talk about this? I don’t want to end up another Brother of Mine in one of your mirrors!”

 

Theta looked at his old friend sadly.

 

“Oh, Koschei. You’re a shadow of your old self -quite literally- and you don’t even know it. I would have saved you if you’d let me, but now, I ‘m not sure I can. I’ll just use this and contain you until I find a way to dampen those drums of yo-”

 

The Master made a flurry of mad grabs for the single glinting coin then, but the Doctor slipped away from him, always twisting just out of his reach.

 

“It’s time, Koschei,” Theta Sigma whispered softly, rubbing a thumb across the burnished gold of the raised symbols etched across the coin.

 

Then the two humans, the warehouse, everything near them, even the docks outside... all was caught up in the flare of bright gold that echoed through the Berlin skyline like a rocket to the moon.


	8. Bibble Bobble

“... you heard correctly, Captain Harkness. There were two humans in the burned out shell of the warehouse.”

 

“Really?  I seem to recall you saying something one helluva lot more immediate than that. Something about footprints?”

 

“Erm, ja, Captain. I said there was only one set of footprints, and the burns... they edged around the two victims, right in a perfect circle! They are still alive! Miraculous!”

 

“Ha! I imagine it would be to a normal human like you. Gee! Annddd wait for it, wait for it. For the hundredth time this year, I, Captain Jack Harkness, now know what Will Smith felt like in Men in Black II.”

 

“Oh, is that an American movie?” said the German officer, taking the cup of coffee Ianto lightly graced him with.

 

Then he took a sip of the Retcon-laced brew and crumpled into the Captain’s arms like a dry leaf.

 

Jack stared at the cup, at the folder, at the thick form of the sleeping man, who was by now folded neatly on the floor with a pillow from the couch under his bald head. “Wow. If only you had been that easy... ”

 

Ianto snorted, a pleasant sound to Jack’s ears.

 

“If I had been that easy I wouldn’t have been worth it. Didn’t he say he had a photo or two of the Beinert girl provided by the family for her safe return, Jack?”

 

Jack took the folder from the unconscious policeman and unwound the red string, then emptied the contents out on the slim black table beside the couch.

 

“Frankly, Ianto my dear, we’re about to find out.”

 

 His fingers slid along the side of one photo as his eyes found a bit of writing scrawled neatly in the bottom left corner. It said:

 

 _“To you, Wil my dear, for your flawless recollection of Puccini. Your guardian angel, John Schmidt.”_

“Well, Ianto, this might give us something. It’s probably just a note from one of her teachers.”

 

But then he flipped the photograph, and nearly dropped it. In the picture, a tantalizing dandy with long red hair and ancient eyes was standing next to a seven year old Wil and her father, with a sack held in his sculptured hands, bright gaze lingering on something just out of sight. It made it seem as though he were looking right at Jack, from every angle.

 

“Apparently a Northerner saved her from drowning on her seventh birthday. Did CPR and everything. But still, it was odd, to say the least.  He ended up leaving a box of coins with her family, leaving strict instruc... Jack?”

 

“It’s... oh crap. Ianto, to the docks. Now.” The photograph was held in Ianto’s face, and the Welshman only had to look once.

 

Jack Harkness couldn’t reach the car door quick enough.


	9. Aul's Well

_“Oh mein Gott! Der ist der Junge vom Pier!”_

 

Wil wheeled as a woman screamed behind her; Pendergast’s breath was ghosting at her shoulder. He was out of breath, not from running, but... what had he been doing when they’d first seen the streets fill with hysterical faces? She wasn’t sure she knew. But he was breathing hard now, his eyes shining like an arctic wolf’s in the gleam of dusk washing everything in golds and reds and looming purples.

 

“I’m compartmentalizing certain irrelevant areas of my mind, Miss Beinert,” he murmured, almost on cue as they rounded a stony corner shop filled with dark shelves of baskets and butterk **ä** se wrapped in parti-colored cellophane.

 

A tourist trap. The dock area was always full of tourists. Today had been no exception.

 

“Were you able to ascertain the thing’s objective from our last vantage, Agent?”

 

Wil was in no mood for evasion; there was a goal to accomplish. They had to get to those docks. Whoever it was causing all the trouble -who was she kidding? It _had_ to be the Doctor-was going to answer for the disappearances of those twenty-six people. The victims had been her friends, her fellow Germans.

 

“By the way, what else were you doing? Mind tricks? You’re thoroughly winded. I’ve never seen you like this.”

 

Aloysius Pendergast stopped running, took a deep breath and looked up at Wil, his pale, narrow lips curving in a wintry, utterly ambiguous smile that might have, under different circumstances, been a point of local gossip for decades to come.

 

“I could hardly take the title of mentalist without the Doctor’s intervention, Miss Beinert.”

 

His face softened briefly, and Wil found herself wondering about the circumstances of their last meeting.

 

“I was analyzing the note the Doctor left for us. It was a passage from Exodus... ”

 

 _"And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever." ([Exodus 21:5-6](http://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/Exd/Exd021.html#top))_

 

Furrowing her brows at the agent’s admission, Wil grabbed a fleeing, balding man by the hem of his faded tan jumper.

 

“... der Junge vom Pier? Was?”

 

But the man’s deep eyes were filled with something Wil could not name. He stared at her staring at him, and his fat mouth shivered with the effort of speech.

 

“Der Dämon… he' s gegessen allen Engeln! Gott speichern uns alle!”

 

His body clenched involuntarily and then he staggered away to join the fleeing throngs. More people took up the cry, and soon it rang wildly through the streets of Berlin’s rural outskirts like the aftermath of an Italian Mass.

 

“What was that? I’m not fluent,” Pendergast asked her, and she answered him, careful to keep one eye on the madding crowds as they darted through the waves of flesh toward the water’s edge.

 

“ _The demon... he’s eaten all the angels._ It doesn’t make sense to me... ”

 

Then they reached the pier.

 

Twenty six pale, winged bodies lay in piles before them, pooled like refuse in the streets. Twenty six aliens, discarded like dolls. Like food. And in the middle of them all, standing like a pillar among the carcasses, stood a young man with brown hair, wearing black dress pants and a white shirt opened to the breeze. His bare feet were stained in blood, and a lake of the red stuff circled his feet, still moving, only to roll to a stop on steep banks forged of dead Angelform Chronovores. Agent Pendergast had briefly spoken of them with someone on the telephone when he’d thought her asleep one night, but, seeing them now, Wil found she had trouble breathing. It was bad enough with all that blood, and as the air caught in her lungs and throat, she held to Pendergast’s hand more tightly.

 

Almost instantly, Pendergast put his other hand on the firearm he kept in his jacket pocket, his custom Les Baer. There was no sense in concealing its sleek silver length any longer, especially with lives at stake.

 

Wil saw this, and shrank back mentally from the tell-tale tightening of his fingers on the grip. “You’re going to fire that? At him? What if that’s-”

 

He never blinked when he spoke, as though he’d used a gun in every possible situation.

 

“The eventual discharge of my weapon is a high probability, at this point,” the agent added softly, giving her a slight smile as he gently pushed her down behind him.

 

Then, his skinny, lithe body a tall, protective wall of white and black, FBI Special Agent Aloysius X. Leng Pendergast dropped to one knee and took aim at the young man standing alone in the sea of red.


	10. Road Trip, and, A Bit of Bonding

“I don’t know what’s worse, Jack,” Ianto Jones called out over the sound of loud air gushing in the front window of their rented trailer, “... the fact that you thought you could fly her or the fact that she wouldn’t let you.”

 

“Shut up Ianto. She’s worried about him, that’s why.  Just... just shut it, all right?”

 

“And you’re not? Look at you! You’re worse than Owen without his morning cuppa.”

 

The stick grew sluggish. The car swerved; Ianto dodged Jack’s fist.

 

“You know, if I didn’t know better, and I don’t, I’d almost think you still loved him.”

 

“Whatever you want to believe, Ianto. Just... try not to mention Owen while I’m driving a European car. He’s dead. We don’t like dead, remember? Besides, the Doctor doesn’t have my panache with a gun.”

 

“Don’t be so modest, sir. Your skill doesn’t stop there. And how do you know? Have you ever seen the man handle a firearm?”

 

Jack leaned over to kiss Ianto Jones on the mouth, just to shut him up. Of course, the kiss turned into two, then a bit of friendly touching, and soon the car was swerving again, skidding to the right, to the left, streaking back and forth up the Autobahn and leaving a few too many streaks zigzagging rubber to explain with any decency to the authorities, should they happen by. Despite their hands tangling in the steering wheel and each other’s hair, clothing, ties...both men managed to get a car door open and fall into a life-saving roll onto the pavement. But the two ex lovers could only watch as their doomed rental wrapped itself around a thick, sturdy black apple some fifteen feet from where they’d landed. Still, the bloody blue Ship they’d been hauling behind them was sitting close to the wreckage, affecting something resembling inculpable innocence and humming along sedately as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She was so going to tell The Doctor about this... damn her. Nice to see she still had her sense of humour, at least.

 

Ianto stood up first; then looked at Jack. “Jack?” he asked softly.

 

The man didn’t answer.

 

“Jack?”

 

Captain Jack Harkness was lying on his face in the road. With an inward groan, Ianto stifled the desire to reach for him, to caress his cheek; instead, he merely opened his mouth.

 

“Weak ankles?”

 

And it was enough, thank god.

 

“Marmph. Marumph! mrrr. Marrrr! _Maaaarr_!”

 

Jack’s hands curled, twitching in a perfect imitation of an ancient martial stranglehold.

 

“I take that as a possible, then,” said the Welshman dryly as he offered his boss with the pretty arse a hand.

 

Jack’s face had scraped itself off onto the hot asphalt; his chin and mouth were a molten ruin of blood and lacerated ribbons of skin. Most of his nose was blackened by steaming tar, and there were splotchy red streaks of burned flesh where his left cheek had been. Thankfully, Jack being Jack, every trace of injury would heal within minutes. Ianto thanked god again as he led the Captain in through the double TARDIS doors, which were hanging ajar. _Served him right, didn’t it? Stupid man, always trying to defy the facts,_ he thought to himself, and just for a moment, the lights in the console room flickered in pattern so briefly, almost in code. It was as if she were agreeing with him.

 

 _But that’s why we love them, Ianto Jones. Because they Can._


	11. Bankruptcy

The Old One could sense the circling ring of beautiful winged bodies around him, stacked with such seeming haphazard as though the 26 Chronovores they belonged to were artifacts in his personal reliquary. There were familiar footsteps circling, too. But soon they would stop, dig into the grass, and one’s set of fingers would aim a crude projectile in his direction. Every venture the little ones could or could not go through with would be utterly pointless. It all was. All was meaningless, before him, behind him, beside him. Everything waned. And he was no exception. But none of that mattered now. Soon his gaze was pooling slowly along the ring of flesh the bodies had made, eyes skirting to the metal disks embedded in each one’s neck. They were, of course, 26 Anti-Time collectors disguised as old German currency and hidden on the one planet that was close enough to the TimeStation to do the cosmos real damage. Once they had collected enough, the tiny devices were designed to transmute a pre-determined number of people with the correct genetic markers into ‘altered’, ‘tamed’ ‘controllable’ Chronovores, making use of the Anti-Time to facilitate conversion. Like control collars. Still, the tooling on the gleaming faces truly was magnificent, a testament to the workmanship of early pre-Dalekian Skaro. Skaro, of course, had long been a fragment of the universal memory. Absently he found himself wondering why in the universe a Skaroan of that time period would have bothered to make such a thing. But that was neither here nor there, and the answer was unimportant, for the moment. And the barely-conscious things had been just as feral as always. So much for the mad Gallifreyan’s ambitions. Then again, even though his decisive little battle with the man had resulted in that man’s absorption and the coins’ activation, there had been one more coin. The coin he’d been thumbing in the warehouse, before he’d set free the two Solians dangling from the high-set bones of the place like freshly strung bovine slabs. What had been the reason? He’d still been awakening, perhaps that... no. He knew better, though still unused to the need for such knowing. He had indeed changed, in the countless little years of sleep he had endured. Even so, an involuntary blink along with a shiver or two still took him. He found it refreshing.  His eyes felt hot, and then he remembered. It was normal for the eyes of those still fleshbound to fill with water, to leak onto one’s cheek their dewy let, to dribble from the chin as still more tears followed dumbly after, like a march of rain drops. They just were.

 

The coin in his hand... it was the control piece, the Master key, of sorts. The failsafe. Suddenly he became aware of the cooling thick fluid that was flowing around him, staining most of the pier in brilliant blackish red and covering his feet to his ankles as it slowly congealed. And he remembered why it was there. With a sigh, he noted the fresh flow of molten tears down his face - his eyes were puffing, now- so again, for the last time, he pressed his fingers to his chest and pushed inward, through layer after layer of writhing, breathing flesh.

 

A lump of throbbing, deep red muscle, dripping and groaning with hard life, came out with a rush when he brought his hand out, his fingers curved around its entire mass as he plopped them from between his chest cavity with a wet smacking sound reminiscent of... was it kissing? Yes, it was. Kissing. A smile touched his lips.

 

“Agh. Only... this one more to go, and then, you’ll all... have your minds again. This will be... my last gift to the Earth, just-” he paused, clutching his chest and smiling as more blood rained down from his lips and joined the quick, rushing flood from his heaving chest, “... just... this little bit... of freedom... ”

 

With that, he flung this new heart after the many others he had carefully pitched onto the coins embedded in the Chronovores’ necks, and they flinched as one, shrinking until they were mere mortal humans again. Heart blood from a descendant of the Other had been the only way to break the genetic lock, because the locking mechanism had been created on pre-Rassilon era Gallifrey.

 

He laughed. So Koschei had gotten his way after all. Theta Sigma was dead, if not in the way his mad friend had envisioned. Then, before his inner throat and sinuses could gather themselves for a snort of amusement, he heard the warm, familiar whirring of the Ship as it materialized somewhere very near to his current point of reference. So he turned around, smack into Jack Harkness and three wide sets of rainbow brown eyes that glittered in the bright sun. The captain held their children in his arms, all three staring up at him as if set to brush long ago in an old, faded portraiture.

 

“Honey... ” Jack Harkness said softly, holding the triplets out to their -mother- with no hint of a grin as Ianto Jones came out of The Ship to stand close by, “... I’m home.”


	12. 26

Wil watched Pendergast lower his firearm with no great bit of relief as the Doctor, or what may or may not have been left of him, finally turned to face the two other men. The one holding the three infants wore a grin like the Doctor’s, and she could tell whose babies they were just by looking at the two of them, standing there, doing nothing and avoiding each other’s gazes even as they looked each other up and down, scrying for differences in every motion, every muted cough, every sigh. Every half-eyed look turned slightly aside from what they both knew had brought them back together to stand where they were standing now.

 

Together. Strange word, that despite the edge of recklessness these two men possessed, it seemed to fit them perfectly, like a missing glove found under the bed. Wil could easily guess just how much soul-searching they’d done in their own company, judging from the lovely little triplets snuggled firmly against the Doctor’s near naked chest. He was giving suck to two, Jack bottle feeding the third. They would probably switch soon.  It was truly amazing just how quickly the Doctor’s gaping chest wound had healed. That fantastic angel of a man had just ripped out his heart 26 times... 26! 26 times he had torn his leftmost heart -yes she had overheard that little tidbit too- from his chest and thrown the still-beating mass so carefully toward each Chronovore. In doing so, he had evidently released them from the coins she’d treasured enough to give away to him, the coins she had kept safe for what seemed like centuries, now. It was maddening even to attempt to conceive of what she had just witnessed. But there Wil stood, naked toes staining themselves without care in the wide pool of his blood. They were all standing in it, even Pendergast, in those expensive Italian loafers.

 

“Doctor!” Wil called out, waving a hand at the Time Lord as she leaped out into the open, standing crimson and fled over those stilling red waters.

 

She would have her answers now. Everything was not over! She had to know.

 

“Doctor! What about the-”

 

But as he turned, his golden eyes slid open like two rusted metal shutters and he gasped, nearly dropping one of his three babies as Jack stuck a hand out to catch the child.  The Doctor whirled on her, spinning, his body swirling about in deadly chorus of up flung red drops so swiftly that the blood he had shed in his efforts became a wall, a wall through which his shaking hand frantically thrust, not reaching for her, not warning her, but beckoning.

 

Wil never saw the bullet as it struck her in the back, never saw the sniper perched atop the lighthouse near the entrance to the pier, sent by some third party to kill the girl with the coins and her entourage once they’d gathered in one place and taken care of things that need taking care of. Easy picking... She fell toward the ground in a slow haze, and feathers of red water sprang from the Doctor’s back in defiance of the strike. Red wings spiraling out to either side of him, the Lord of Time began to run to her. Then the 26 people asleep on the ground began to stir slightly, the coins floating up from their necks and into his hands as if summoned. Just as he reached her, arriving in a cloud of red that must have been his hair, his wings, his very essence that had poured out onto the pavement, she settled into his arms like a fold of cloth and he was gone with her into the light, in a blur of scarlet hues so dense and deep he could have still been bleeding, had the three men still standing on the pier not glimpsed his very hale departure with their own eyes. Had the girl’s gleaming body become somewhat smaller as he’d held her? They couldn’t be sure; besides the three men knew it didn’t matter now, as they each broke into a run after the sniper. Who he was, why he had done it, that didn’t matter.

 

The Doctor and the girl were gone.


	13. Homecoming

The girl was unconscious; slowly, as though she were his own dear Susan, the Doctor laid Wil Beinert in the whitest, largest patch of ice free snow he could find along the frozen river’s sprawling bank. His lips brushed her forehead, and symbols in old Gallifreyan careened from the contact point between their flesh, running over her and filling her skin as though she were a page of some book. They were the letters of his name, written in music, in math and in magick, and the subliminal linguistic tug would guide her to him in the future they had just departed from.  And, because he had imparted his name to her, she was no longer fourteen; a necessary evil, to ensure that no one would question his saving her younger self from the water. A good thing, as the music had called the original Wil to the river’s edge, where she had drowned, and he had saved her. Thus the all consuming paradox was halted, by his actions here, now. Again.

 

As the rest of his centuries long name glistened into her, running from him like the blood he’d spilt oceans of upon the kelp crusted planks of the pier in the service of the monkey kings, he felt himself sway. A part of him was leaving, going into her. Not to stay, oh no, but together, name and coins together would keep her until that future meeting in the street. The day when he would cry and she had cupped his face with hands like his sweet Susan’s. It was too much to bear, always having to... to do this.

 

He could have seen her timeline, if he’d wished; after all, would he not remain the Red Guardian for another few moments before he would return to his Jack and their three glorious babes, to Jack’s precious partner Ianto, and to Aloysius, his one time student in the ways of so much more than self?

 

The Doctor smiled. He was beginning to feel the life of the Guardian he would become flow out of him with the last of his name, the last of his strength, it seemed, in the chill, in the numbing cold. After he had given the coins to Wil’s father and gotten out of sight, his hair would return to its shortness, its brown, unruly chaos. His body already felt like one big ache.

 

Carefully he knelt down, gingerly lifted Wil’s unconscious body and walked into the frigid river water, to get them both wet enough, to soak them through enough so that his back story would be believed even by Jack. His name would keep her safe, but he still needed a reason to save her, a reason to _be_ there _to_ save her. He walked farther into the silent surface of the river, the water not quite chill enough to frost over, but just enough to tinge his long red hair with crystals that did not immediately melt as he breathed. And so he breathed, slowly, listening to the sounds of himself in the near darkness of German winternacht, casting dusty senses about and gently closing any roving eyes that might be prone to catching him about his work of fixing the universe, one genius, brilliant little girl at a time.

 

Soon, he thought as he stopped just short of the river’s center and spoke faintly in her ear, as he caressed her sleeping face with both hands while floating her atop the water’s gelid skin, making sure to keep one hand beneath her so she would not drown in truth a second time.

 

“Soon your father will be out here, searching for you. Soon I shall trudge forth and bring you out of the river, and together, your father and I, John Schmidt the passerby, shall breathe warmth back into your bones and set you on your way with your treasures, Wil Beinert,” he said, smiling down at her as he saw the searchlights playing jaggedly across a ridge up the bank, “... as for me love, I have places to go, things to do. Harknesses to catch. He and I, we have a previous engagement at our favorite pub... ”

 

 ---

 

FIN


End file.
